


When She Needs Him

by ThatWildWolf



Series: When I Need You [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Emotions, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, OTP Feels, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 21:29:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15179783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWildWolf/pseuds/ThatWildWolf
Summary: This is what fourteen-year-old me thought a good way to write fluff of my OTP is. Years later, one thing hasn't changed: I still ship the same OTP. Updating the whole series of old one-shots now, maybe someone will like this.





	When She Needs Him

Sarah Jane Smith was not happy.

It happened quite often that she and the Doctor would return from an adventure in outer space (quite possibly after having saved a whole planet from destruction) and she would just fall onto her bed and fall asleep immediately, but it didn't happen all that often that she was left so emotionally spent after it.

It wasn't that it had been particularly devastating in an emotional sense, or that she and the Doctor didn't get along well recently. Oh no, things have been amazing between them, by all means. Travelling through time and space was very thrilling - in a positive way - too, and she wouldn't have missed it for the world. Everything was honky dory.

Still, Sarah Jane was not happy.

She didn't know what exactly it was. Was it about just simply being fed up with all of that? About how much pain and suffering she saw on daily basis now? No, that couldn't be it. They set things right almost every time, and the Doctor made sure every day was memorable in some good way. He could be really creative when the need arose: from a picnic on Metebilis to a (rather romantic) candle-lit dinner on Darillium, he always knew what to do to make her forget about all the bad stuff. He was still quite the romantic - not as much as in his previous body, but still rather unexceptionally, though you had to look through his superficial demeanour to notice. Still the same old Doctor - she would think when, sometimes, he slipped - just in new casing. Better at hiding emotions. She didn't get him. There was nothing wrong in showing how much he cared, was there?

Sarah Jane sighed, kicking a metal tin lying on the road. She looked around, but there was no one else in sight. _Figures_ , she thought. Not that she particularly expected to see many people walking about in the middle of a work day, but it just made the whole setting even more so uncomfortable. Amazing. Was it coming to this that she considered a normal day in a normal place more uncomfortable than finding herself in the middle of some alien conflict thousands of light years away from Earth? It wasn't that she was weird. She just had a sort of complex life, that's all.

"Oh yeah, did I mention I travel through time?" She snorted mockingly, pulling the key to her house out of her pocket. "In a _telephone box_?" Yeah, good luck with that. Goodbye, any potential relationships.

She frowned as the key wouldn't turn. She tried again, but for nothing. Quickly checking her pocket, she managed to identify the problem. There were at least five other keychains in there. Frowning, she decided to take care of it later. Maybe label them: 'home', 'locker', 'time machine', something like that. For now, she just wanted to get inside and have a nice cup of tea. Preferably hot.

The third key she tried turned out to be the one, which at least saved her the trouble of recognising which one was for the house.

She pushed the door open, slipped inside and shut the door behind her. Closing her eyes, she let out a breath of relief. Home, at last. As much as she loved travelling, it was good to know there was a place she belonged. Even if it was just this little place in Croydon, it was fine. It was cosy... -ish. At least there was room for two people, and with how she spent most time with the Doctor anyway, it was good enough. Her aunt had talked about moving away before, but they never really took it seriously.

Sarah slumped down on the couch in front of the small television monitor. She sighed as she noticed a post-it-note on the coffee table. She took it to see what it said.

_Sarah Jane,_

She smiled lightly at that. Yes, the Doctor _was_ the only person who actually called her 'Sarah', but he did it to the extent that she actually thought about herself that way now.

_I don't know if you're going to return from your crazy travels anytime soon, but just so you know, I'm back in America. I'll return in October, if you intend on staying home that long._

_Love,  
_ _Lavinia_

Sarah found herself grinning. Although her aunt pretended she was against her adventurous life, she actually approved of it, even more so after Sarah had introduced her to the Doctor to convince her he isn't some kind of lunatic. (It had taken Sarah some time to talk him into dressing more like a normal person for the occasion.) But the most crucial reason, she thought, why she wasn't in much trouble with her aunt about the whole her breezing around thing was that she didn't give many details as to where exactly the journeys took her. 'Oh yes,' Sarah would say. 'We were in Italy just the other week.' She just wouldn't mention that it was 15th century Italy and that they were chasing after an alien threat to all of humanity. Once you've gone through the initial confusion, it was quite easy to tell apart the stuff that was safe to talk about from the stuff which was... well, the stuff which was _not_.

But, looking at it from a completely non-subjective point of view, the note also meant that she had the whole house for herself. A typical girl her age would probably marvel at the opportunity to hold a party or simply invite some friends over. Sarah Jane Smith, however, was not a typical girl.

She thought about what to do now. She supposed she could do some of the work Alistair had assigned her, but she wasn't very eager on that. It was mostly boring paperwork and the journalist inside her rebelled against making printed word a formality. Technically, she didn't even work for UNIT, so it wasn't her responsibility to prepare forms to fill in. And, after all, she could always blame the Doctor. Sarah gave an amused huff. That explanation wouldn't actually be very far from the truth as to why she didn't finish her work on time.

She noticed another piece of paper lying on the table. This one was a letter addressed to her. Sunday Times. She gave the letter a strange look, which technically wasn't directed to the letter itself (but due to the lack of anyone else in the room, it had to do). She had better things to do now than writing articles to a mundane paper. Again, she marvelled at how her life turned upside down since she's met the Doctor. She didn't even consider _opening_ the envelope, although a year ago she would be thrilled at the opportunity to do so.

Funny, she didn't feel so tired anymore. What can you do when you're a time traveller stranded at home with no means of entertaining yourself other than the conventional ones?

In the end, she decided to at least pretend she was a normal person and spend the rest of the day watching television. She found a dusty pack of Jelly Babies on the bottom of some drawer in the kitchen. It didn't look terrifyingly old, so she decided it would do as a temporary snack. Playing a cassette with her favourite episodes of _The Newcomers_ on it, she settled onto the couch, a mug of tea in one hand and the packet of jellies in the other. The sweets seemed somewhat stale, but she decided not to pay it much attention, instead taking almost demonic pleasure in decapitating the figures.

 _Die, gelatine creatures,_ she thought as she munched the jellies. A smile crept onto her lips. Just how much spending so much time with the Doctor was affecting her? She waved it off. Being cruel to Jelly Babies wasn't a symptom of insanity. Not yet, at least. She reckoned she would notice if she was losing it.

oooOOO~OOOooo

Sarah bit her lip in silent anticipation as the Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the lock to the cell she was being kept in.

"Might want to stand back," he warned her. She gave him a heavy look.

" _Where_?"

A spark of amusement lit up in his eyes. "You've got a point, I suppose." There you have the Doctor: making fun of little things like that, even whilst in mortal danger.

"Oh, just shut up." Sarah groaned and winced as the futuristic lock on the door exploded, sparks bursting in her direction.

"Alright," he grabbed her hand with his trademark troublemaker's grin. "Now for the running."

It had been three hours since the TARDIS landed on an alien spaceship which the Doctor, much to his horror, recognised as one used by the Cybermen. For better or worse, it had turned out that they were actual Mondasians from before the cyber revolution. (There you have the beauty of time travel.) It didn't make them any less hostile, though, and it was just by luck that the Doctor avoided getting captured as well.

It had just hurt Sarah that, once again, he had to rescue her. Sometimes she wondered why he even bothered having her around if she was so much of a burden. It also didn't feel nice to know that, without the Doctor and his wondrous Time Lord technology (not to mention the wondrous-ness of the Doctor himself) she was just useless. She couldn't even escape from captivity. Even more, she couldn't even avoid being captured.

Maybe she wasn't fit for all of that after all.

But then the Doctor dragged her along the enormous spaceship in search of the TARDIS, and she didn't have any more time to think as she just ran by his side. She trusted him completely and knew that they would be safe in a matter of minutes, no matter what he might say.

Sure enough, they reached the safety of the ship without any unpleasantries along the way and soon Sarah found herself sitting on a tourist chair in the corner and watching the Doctor fiddle with the console mindlessly, apparently deep in thought. Sarah liked watching him like that. She thought it was cute how his eyebrows furrowed when he thought about something very hard. So she just sat there passively with a warm smile on her lips, waiting for him to realise that she was still in the same room with him.

"Doctor?" She tried after a minute.

"Not now, Sarah. I'm thinking." He waved a hand dismissively. She sighed. Of course he would dismiss her like that. She stood up and walked around the console room for a while. It wasn't a very interesting place, actually.

"You need to install a bookshelf here," she said, although she knew her suggestion would most probably be ignored. "Or two." He still paid her no attention, though now at least was engaged in some activity; she could hear the sound of the TARDIS' engines. "Where are we?" She asked, leaning over the console so that she was practically under his face. He smiled down at her.

"Home."

That sounded rather cryptical, because he might have meant her home as her house or London, or even, and she wasn't exaggerating, as he had used that term a number of times before, Earth overall. There was also a chance - a remarkably small chance, she knew, but she liked to _hope_ \- that he meant Gallifrey.

She pushed both of the police box doors open, only to reveal the street where she lived. It wasn't very surprising that it was her home that he meant, but she felt a bit of a disappointment that he was leaving her so soon.

"Sarah?"

She raised an eyebrow at the sudden attention, but turned around to face him anyway.

"What's wrong?"

"Why..." She drifted off, suddenly finding it hard to look him in the face. There was just so much ingenious sincerity and actual, genuine, concern in his eyes that she couldn't find the right words. "Why would you think something is wrong?"

He just raised his eyebrows ever so slightly, showing just how unconvinced he was.

She dabbed on her shirt, unsure of what to say.

"I'm pathetic without you." Her own voice sounded weak in her ears.

"Now, Sarah, we both know that is not true," he said in that I'm-trying-to-cheer-you-up tone of his, grinning widely. Then why did it feel like he was sad? He was smiling. Sarah kicked a tin can lying on the concrete of the road. Most other people she knew were so easy to understand- or, at least, that was how she liked to think. On him, however, she couldn't put a finger. She wasn't sure if it was about him being an alien or being the Doctor. (Most probably the latter.) Still, he was a really hard nut to crack, and even after all those years, when she thought that she knew him inside and out, he still managed to surprise her.

The Doctor had once told her, months earlier, that he didn't understand the human reaction to happiness which was tears of joy. "Happy crying", he had called it - and said that it didn't make sense. She had tried to explain, although with little result. Now? She felt that she was the one who needed explanation - of how smiling with sadness worked. It was his same usual grin, but something in his eyes told her that it was also something completely different altogether.

"Stay."

She didn't realise she was saying it until she said it. He looked at her with as much confusion as the amount of uncertainty she was feeling.

"Stay with me," she repeated, this time barely more than a whisper. "Please."

It took one look into her eyes and he understood that he couldn't leave her that night. That she couldn't make it alone. She was too much of a nervous wreck at the moment to be left on her own. He knew, and he understood.

He had dragged a mattress out of the TARDIS and into her room, proceeded by a nightlight, a pillow, a blanket (she protested against that, insisting that he take a warmer quilt, but all for nothing) and two mugs of lukewarm tea, which they shared in silence.

He had stayed up with her until she felt the fatigue taking the better of her and until sleep finally claimed her.

He had sat there by her side all night and when she woke up, screaming, he was there to soothe her and ensure that everything was fine.

He had caressed her when she wouldn't stop crying, comforting her without questioning anything.

He had been exactly what she needed.

When she woke up in the morning, feeling better than after the usual night, he was sprawled on the floor in what looked like a highly uncomfortable position, blanket, of course, tossed aside. She pouted at the sight of him. Five hundred years old and can't even take care of himself in matters as elementary as sleeping. But she couldn't be angry at him; not for long. She watched him sleep in silence for a moment. He looked so peaceful, and so childlike that she could barely suppress a giggle. Instead, she just smiled warmly.

She pulled a loose strand of hair from his face. His wild curls were soft but sturdy in touch, and, of course, the hair bounced back into its former position as soon as she took her hand away. She sighed.

"Figures."

Careful not to wake him up - though she was almost sure that his sleep was deep enough that he wouldn't even notice if she walked over him - Sarah left the room. She had barely opened the door when she realised it would not open because of the TARDIS, which was parked in the corridor. The door opened swiftly, however, and she realised he must have taken the time during the night to park it elsewhere. No wonder he was so intent on sleep if he didn't get any during the night. She shook her head disapprovingly.

"Do you always have to prove me right?" She whispered, looking at him over her shoulder. For now, she thought he was definitely not capable of taking care of himself.

Sarah walked downstairs, careful to make as little noise as possible and proceeded to make a makeshift breakfast. Two cups of tea and two plates of scrambled eggs later, she heard the creaking of the stairs and soon enough, the Doctor came into the kitchen, looking more drowsy than she had ever seen him. He looked at her with what she could only describe as a complete reconciling to whatever was happening as he slumped onto a chair helplessly.

Sarah laughed gently.

"Cup of tea?"

* * *


End file.
